Students' opposition to Lockheed Martin is just Shunpiking Online Vo.6 No.3

Dalhousie students march through the university on January 10th to condemn Israel's war against Palestine

HALIFAX (4 February 2009) - A LETTER was delivered to Dalhousie President Dr. Tom Traves today demanding the severing of all ties between Dalhousie University and Lockheed Martin, the world's largest military contractor. The letter, drafted by the Student Coalition Against War, is signed by an initial list of endorsers including several faculty members, student organizations and community groups. The letter is the first in a series of actions being planned in opposition to Lockheed Martin's presence at the Summer Job Fair being held February 10 at the Cunard Centre from 10am - 4pm, a widely-advertised event organized by the career services centers of Dalhousie, St. Mary's and Mount St. Vincent Universities. (The letter is reproduced for your information in this edition.)

A similar action was successful in preventing the American multinational from holding a recruiting session at the University of New Brunswick last week. The letter demands that Lockheed be barred from participating in the Halifax job fair.

Lockheed Martin, which received at least 95 per cent of its revenue from the US Department of Defense in 2005, has seen its profits soar since the election of US President George W. Bush in 2000 and the launching of unjust wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq. U.S.-led wars and troublemaking around the globe are at an all-time high; apparently the U.S.-led Empire is in an arms race with insurgents. Lockheed Martin employs over 140,000 people worldwide, including more than 500 in Canada. The corporation reported 2007 sales of $41.86 billion, up from $39.6 billion in 2006.

This monopoly is directly involved in the Israeli military occupation of Palestine. Its F-16 fighter jets being used to slaughter innocent civilians in the recent attacks on Gaza, contributing to the murder of over 1300 Palestinians, including 412 children. Furthermore, these Israeli F-16 fighter pilots, known as "assassins of the sky" for their practice of targeted killings" of elected Palestinian lawmakers, leaders of the society and civilians, were invited by the Canadian government to train in a US-NATO urban warfare operation codenamed "Exercise Maple Leaf" at Cold Lake, Alberta, in May-June, 2005. The letter points out that F-16 planes were used to even bomb a Palestinian university, the Islamic University in Gaza, not to mention the public schools of Rafah. Lockheed Martin is also responsible for manufacturing the cluster bombs extensively used in the 2006 invasion of Lebanon and condemned by the UN Convention on Cluster Munitions, of which Canada is a recent signatory.

The letter specifically opposes the $2 million in research funding invested last May by Lockheed Martin in Dalhousie University, and demands the severing of all research ties with the American arms monopoly. In the same week Lockheed Martin invested another $4 million in Professor John Spray to establish a high-speed impact laboratory at the University of New Brunswick's Planetary and Space Science Centre. "This is a very exciting opportunity, with scope for increasing university-industry relations as we transform academic knowledge into applied products," Dr. Spray claimed at the time. More revealingly, Dr Spray rationalized that, "We anticipate privatizing aspects of our activities after five years. We also intend to build strong, complementary manufacturing partnerships within Atlantic Canada." The ceremony was presided over by Harper's Industry Minister, Jim Prentice.

No matter what the claim and the stated purpose, the fact remains that public funds funnelled to Lockheed Martin are also being used to enlarge the holdings of foreign and Canadian investors and not into public projects that may benefit all Canadians and in which the public retains full ownership. Rather it is being funnelled into certain private projects and holdings, which become part of the ownership rights and power of certain individuals and their private holdings, be it Lockheed Martin or in enriching "complementary manufacturing partnerships" in Atlantic Canada.

Furthermore, as Jane Kirby, a graduate student at Dalhousie and a member of the Student Coalition Against War (SCAW), points out, "The funding, which ensures Lockheed licensing rights over any intellectual property arising from the research, is part of an agreement made with the Canadian government that Lockheed Martin invest in Atlantic Canada in exchange for the government's purchase of 17 Super Hercules aircraft." R & D are necessary features of modern socialized production and a consequence of humankind's treasure house of knowledge. Monopolies such as Lockheed Martin utilize socially-educated employees for private gain without directly reimbursing the educational system and society that trained them. Results flowing from company directed and publicly-financed R & D are seized by the monopolies and declared their private intellectual property and given legal protection with patents. The guarding of socially produced "private" science is financed and organized in large measure by state legal and security institutions, unbeknownst to the public and even the politicians.

For their part, the Super Hercules aircraft being ordered from Lockheed Martin are to be utilized by the Canadian Forces to ferry troops and war materiel into foreign lands thousands of miles from Canada, beginning with Afghanistan but not to exclude future conflicts. Maintaining a heavier "lift" capability, together with military superiority in the air with better fighter planes and missiles is considered crucial for U.S. Empire-building. The resistance in Gaza of the Palestinians showed that such military forces would not last long without such superior air power. Ms Kirby adds that "This partnership is demonstrative of the company's close ties with governments implicated in maintaining a global state of conflict."

The ties are so close that Lockheed Martin maintains an office, ostensibly rent free, right on the premises of CFB Halifax, headquarters of Maritime Command of the Canadian Forces.

"Any company which profits from war and suffering is not welcome on our campuses," Jane Kirby affirms.

The response to the letter suggests that this sentiment is shared by more than a handful of student activists, with faculty members and community groups endorsing the letter, and it is hoped that the administration will take the concerns raised seriously and tear up its contract. Plans are under way for protests against Lockheed Martin at next week's job fair, with all students and supporters being encouraged to come express their opposition. This comes at a time when when more and more Canadians see Canada's military as annexed to the U.S. war machine. The people are demanding an end to all military contact with the U.S. Empire-builders. There is a growing movement for an anti-war government and to stop Canadian participation in the war of aggression and occupation of Afghanistan and its collusion with Israeli occupation of Palestine. Canadians can play an important role by refusing to have public monies, military forces, finished goods, R & D, raw materials especially oil and gas and ports especially strategic harbours such as Halifax to be used to strengthen the U.S. military.

Lockheed Martin's ties to Dalhousie are just one of the most obvious examples of a broader pattern of increasing military and corporate presence in universities across the country, as evidenced by the appointment by Memorial University as its CEO of former armed forces chief of staff Rick Hillier, who apprenticed as deputy commanding general of the American Third Armored Corps in Fort Hood, Texas from 1998-2000. It is well documented and public knowledge that Lockheed Martin is one American corporation that has overwhelmed the state with a well-oiled retinue of lobbyists and inducements and is making it serve its dictates at the expense of Canadians and their sovereignty. But the reality goes farther.

In fact, these monopolies are claiming that all public assets of the society be turned over to them. They demand that everything in the society including public academic centres, public knowledge, science and technology are to be officially privatized and used to strengthen monopoly control and for wars for markets, resources and the defence of state colonial projects such as Israel in the Middle East. The militarization of the economy and the universities as a source of jobs and development by paying the rich is disinformation. The justification of "freedom of academic inquiry" is meant to disinform. It is simply perverse and illogical to claim that closed-door workshops held with the Israeli naval forces on "maritime security", as convened by the Dalhousie Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, which receives $780,000 from DND's Security and Defence Forum along with similar sums from the American Donner Foundation, financing that stretches back to 1970, is akin to some ideal higher than naked participation in bloody war, aggression, annexation and retrogression. The restructuring of the university in this direction - where academic programs or parts thereof are cannibalized and the most expensive high tech equipment, facilities and travel privileges are put at the disposal of the few specialists, researchers and others working in these anti-social programmes, tuition fees are steadily hiked to cover the balance, classroom sizes swell, services reduced and library budgets slashed - also means that less and less students have the opportunity for post-secondary education. It is monopoly right and paying the rich that must be stopped.

Furthermore, the Lockheed martin case shows that decisions on the multi-million dollar infusion of military funding into the university is being carried out by a few individuals meeting behind closed doors in whom power has been concentrated. On May 16, 2008, Dalhousie president Tom Traves, a known Zionist, claimed that he welcomed "open debate on its operations and agreements" in the Lockheed Martin funding. Yet no discussion whatever of the university community has been held in the ensuing eight months to elaborate these matters and draw warranted conclusions. This is consistent with the absence of any atmosphere on campus to encourage students, staff and faculty, like Canadians in general, to engage with political issues that effect their lives. Aside from voting every four or five years in general elections, everyone is supposed to be indifferent to the relations of power in our society and what interest they represent. This is a central question that the students have had to address in order to progress on any single issue.

The contrast between how Dalhousie presents itself and its actual actions points to the fact that the marginalization of students, faulty and staff from discussion on these matters is intentional. The elite knows full well that the university community will not support the militarization of the university as a tool of U.S. empire-building. Student and faculty opposition is being demonstrated across the country. Mass actions took place on 20 Quebec campuses last fall alone. For this very reason, it works to keep students in the dark on what is truly taking place and creates the impression that the decision-making should be left to those who know best. It demands that the students' union content itself with so-called "student issues" and cause trouble for those, such as the Dalhousie-based Nova Scotia Public Interest Group (NSPIRG), under the pretext that it was concentrating on "off campus issues." A false dichotomy is created as if the issues the students are raising do not serve the general interests of the society and thus they should mind their Ps and Qs. In a dastardly maneouvre, NSPIRG's funds were arbitrarily withheld for over six months in 2008 until it successfully mobilized scores of students to isolate the roadblock and compel the students' union to discharge its responsibilities.

There is an alternative -- Let's discuss!

Recalling President Traves' pledge welcoming debate, Asaf Rashid, also a member of SCAW, asserts that "Tuesday's action is part of our submission to that debate". He adds: "We are holding Dr. Tom Traves to his word. We hope our attempt to engage in that debate will not be interfered with."

It is just such public discussion that is becoming possible in the four Halifax universities due to the combined efforts of such groups as the SCAW, the Palestine Solidarity Society and the Arab Students Society, Native Students Association, CKDU radio journalists, and NSPIRG together with fora such as the recent Halifax Teach-In on Palestine in January and the successful panel on the "military-industrial-academic complex" on November 27, 2008. They are striving to create a space where perspectives valuable for the society and global humanity can be openly discussed and thrashed out, including the important role of the university as a public institution itself and the sovereignty of Canada as well. To politicize communities around issues that are political by their very nature is a contribution, one that universities, civil society and governments should be happy about. They are exercising their rights as members of the society.

SCAW is continuing to mobilize students as well as the community around these issues, and will be holding a forum addressing military influence over universities on February 16th, at 7pm in room 302 of the Dalhousie Student Union Building. The students are saying that there is an alternative and have confidence that their stand is just. They deserve your active support.

For more information contact:
Jane Kirby janekirby2@gmail.com(902) 219-1522
Asaf Rashid handsofnothing@gmail.com (902) 402-0898

Halifax students march from Dalhousie University to the city's downtown on January 10th to condemn Israel's assault on Gaza (Photo courtesy of David Parker)